Up to This Pointe (2 page)

Snow is in my eyes. I blink it from my false lashes, but
still it falls, first scattered, floating and then insistent, swirling: a blizzard. Our toes drag paths through the drifts, making patterns and circles. Our feet disappear beneath the white, but we keep on, sweating, absolutely boiling under ice-blue lights. Music, urgent as the snowfall's impetus, swells and races. I can't see past the dizzy cyclone, nothing but white, and still I point, prepare, whip my head around, and pirouette, turn, turn, turn—

“Harper!”

My name called from the darkness beyond the storm trips my concentration. I slip and fall. Hard.

“Oh, honestly,” the voice sighs. Madame Simone. Pissed.

The music stops and the snow lets up.

I remain, stunned, on the floor.

“Ladies, if you were under the impression a pirouette would be any easier in a snowstorm beneath a hundred and twelve degrees of Fresnel light, I have no sympathy for you. I will not tolerate this laziness! Spot. Spot!”

From the audience she pounds the floor, her scare-the-crap-out-of-the-students stick probably bending, about to snap. So is she. Were the lights up, we would see the vein above her left eyebrow pulse. I glance at the backstage clock. Ten-fifteen. We've been at this for nearly three hours. I close my eyes.

“You're killing me! Killing your beloved
professeur.
I am physically dying! It is very simple: single, double, arabesque, plié! Clean, finish it, use the floor! Direct your energy down and up, from inside. Harper, stop turning those feet out! Use your hips. How many times must I say this? My God, it's like you've never seen a dance floor in your lives! Why must you torment me this way?”

The stage lights buzz and click in the snowy silence. Simone rents one of the smaller San Francisco State University theaters for our yearly
Nutcracker
(performed in November to get a jump on the season, and also it's way cheaper). Though compared with her studio, it feels huge to us. Especially now.

“Let us attempt to achieve competence this time, shall we? From Kate's entrance. And, ladies? I will not stop you again. If you bring shame upon yourselves and your families, I wash my hands of it. Music!”

Kate grabs my hand, pulls me up, brushes the snow from my rehearsal tutu.

“Oh my God,” she whispers. “What the hell?”

We hobble offstage and regroup, rotate our ankles, stretch our feet. The music starts, Tchaikovsky's couldn't-be-less-subtle
Nutcracker.

I rub my poor hip. “Be careful,” I whisper to Kate. The stage is now three inches deep in coconut flakes. White and floaty, it doesn't melt. Smells like Hawaii. Looks like the South Pole.

Kate exhales, pulls up from her core, lifts her head, prepares, and runs lightly to center stage to start us again. I lean into the light and watch her from the wings.

Any yelling Simone does is definitely not directed at Kate. Endless extension, every turn precise, perfectly executed. Her pointe shoes make no sound, even landing jetés—I could happily watch her forever, even in this tropical snow, which Simone has always said we could never afford, but a bunch of parents donated the money for it this year. We've been jonesing for this night. What ballerina in her right mind wouldn't want to dance the “Waltz of the Snowflakes” with snow really falling, just like the San Francisco Ballet? It takes your breath away, synchronized ghosts moving through the blurry storm, stunning to watch—but clearly a giant pain in the ass to actually dance.

Kate is nearly ankle-deep in the coconut, the snowfall revs back up, and from the shadows, four of us wade through the slippery drifts to join her, our Snow Queen. I concentrate; muscle memory takes over. We watch each other and let Kate lead us in this most painful beauty. The burning in our legs and arms; the raw, open blisters on our feet; the blackened, missing toenails—they all go away. Our breath comes hard and fast, but we smile, sweat and snow in our eyes. We make it look like floating, flying. Effortless.

I turn out from my hips—shoulders back, arms strong—and let the melty joy wash over me. I land my turns. I don't fall. My heart races.

In all the world there is nothing better, no brighter joy, than this.

The music ends. We are still. Arms crossed, feet pointed, panting chests heaving with restraint, our smiles bright. Snow falls. Silence.

“Well,” comes Simone's disembodied disappointment. “We'll try again tomorrow.”

Kate and I sneak down the dark corridors of the science building, where I dump the contents of my dance bag—shoes, hairpins, makeup, medical tape, scissors, hair spray, Bengay, tights—to find the keys to my mom's office. She is a marine biology professor here at SF State and keeper of a mini fridge full of water and iced tea, and all kinds of delightful snacks.

“Oh, hurry, hurry,” Kate moans. “I'm dying!”

“You are not, you big baby. Just hold on….” I find the key and scoop my junk back into my bag, and we fall inside onto Mom's futon sofa.

“Thank God,” Kate sighs. She leans over my lap to raid the mini fridge stash. “Chex Mix!”

“Gross.” I drain a liter bottle of water in, like, ninety seconds, lie back against the whale-shaped pillow I sewed in third grade for a Mother's Day present, and open a bottle of iced tea.

We sit and breathe for a while in the quiet office, dark but for a sea star night-light and the ten-gallon aquarium bubbling on Mom's desk, guppies and mollies darting through waving grass. Maps of Antarctica and photographs of seals and penguins cover the walls. Kate searches for peanuts, tossing pretzels back in the Chex Mix bag.

“I know it's a pain,” she says, “but ‘Snow'—don't you
love
 it?”

I nod, drain the tea, and open another bottle of water.

“Plus, if we get trapped in the theater, like if there's an earthquake or something, we can eat it.”

“Sure.”

“Harp,” she says in her mom voice.

“Yeah.”

“Come on. It's like running on ice. I'm amazed all of us didn't fall.”

“I'm not.”

“Oh jeez.”

“Neither is Simone.”

“Screw Simone.”

“Dude.”

“No, seriously, she's insane! We get one rehearsal with it and it's off to the races?”

I love her for saying it. Still, her kindness doesn't help.

I look up into the eyes of Robert Falcon Scott. Explorer. Scientist. His black-and-white image in a place of honor on the wall above Mom's desk. He is our third cousin's aunt's great-grandfather. Or something, I don't remember. It's all cross-stitched on a pillow at home if I need to follow the genetics. His blood is Mom's, the reason for her life of science. His blood is mine, the reason I know I will not fall again.

In the photograph, my ancestor is standing on the Antarctic ice in 1912 at the geographic South Pole before a British flag planted in the snow. He is surrounded by his weary crew, all nearly dead but at last where they intended to be. Inscribed on the photograph's frame is Mom's personal version of Scott's do-or-die spirit:
AUT MORIERE PERCIPIETIS CONANTUR. “
Succeed, or die in the attempt.”

“You are a beautiful dancer,” Kate says. “You
are.
” She chews in the silence. “Ashley Bouder!” she shouts. “Thank
God
! I couldn't think of her name; that would have driven me insane—New York, she's a principal, she falls
all
the time and no one cares—she's amazing!”

I shrug.

“Harp. You think Nureyev never fell? Yuan Yuan Tan? Baryshnikov? Come on, that guy probably spends more time lying on the floor than he does dancing.”

“That's because of the vodka.”

She grabs my foot and shakes it. “Everyone falls.”

What I want to say is,
You don't,
but I am a Scott. Self-pity is absent in the double helix strands of our do-or-die DNA, so instead I sigh. “Coconut is too expensive to practice with more than once. She wanted it perfect.”

“Which is her own problem.” Kate goes to the aquarium, sprinkles some dehydrated worms on the sleeping fish. “Just, if she gets on you about it, scream
Ashley Bouder
in her face. She'll
love
it. So listen—aside from your falling and ruining the entire rehearsal—really, how fun was tonight?”

I give in. “Amazing.”

“Right?” She sighs. “Cross that off the life list: dance ‘Snow' with
snow
? Done!”

She's right. She is.

“Okay.” I yawn through my smile. “Ready?”

She catches my contagious yawn and stretches. We pull on sweats over our tights and leotards. I write a note to Mom on a Post-it and stick it to the aquarium glass.

Thanks for the sustenance.

P.S. Water your spider plant.

What kind of heartless monster are you?

I pour the last of my water into the parched soil of the struggling plant, root-bound in a clay pot my older brother, Luke, made for Mom probably also in his third-grade class—such a crafty age.

“Shall we?” Kate smiles.

San Francisco fog is never more beautiful than when we're boiling hot after rehearsal. I yank my knit hat off my head and shrug out of my hoodie.

“Don't,” Kate says. “You'll get sick.”

“That's a myth. Cold doesn't get you sick; germs do.” The mist winds around the cypress trees and lampposts of SF State's rolling green campus, just a few blocks down and across 19th Avenue from the ballet studio and both our houses in the West Portal neighborhood.

“All right,” she says. “Your funeral. Lie in bed miserable and miss the show. Miss graduation. Miss auditions. Just remember I told you so, dummy.”

I pull my hat back on.

She smiles.

The Muni train rattles past, and we cross the tracks against the red.

She hugs me in the pool of streetlamp light at the bottom of her driveway. “It's a gorgeous dance. You're gorgeous in it. We're almost there. Okay?”

I nod.

“Coconut snow is slippery as snot. Everyone knows that.”

“Gross. Why would anyone know that?”

“It's known!” She holds my shoulders. “Harp. It's Friday. We get to sleep in tomorrow!”

Sometimes it is hard to tell if she really forgets things or maybe doesn't listen in the first place.

“Class,” I say.

“Not till ten!”

“Not
ours.
I've got kindies to teach.”

“Ugh, Saturday
morning
? Since when?”

“Three years, dude. Sunday, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You just taught a class before rehearsal!”

“Those were the babies. Tomorrow's the kindies and first graders.”

“Whatever. Simone can teach them by herself.
Sleep in!
”

The luxury. She knows I would if I could—teaching makes my own classes possible. I start the walk to my house, waving backward over my shoulder.

“Oh, wait,” I call. “Breakfast! Nine sharp!”

“I'll sleep till eight-forty-five,” she says. “Hey! Be careful. Walk in the light!”

“Got it, Mom.”

“Good night!” She chaînés all the way up to her door, waves, and shuts it dramatically behind her.

West Portal hums with Friday night–ness. Loud, drunk SF State kids stumble in and out of bars. Neon lights in bar windows buzz lazily. Upstart little restaurants representing the cuisine of practically every member of the United Nations line both sides of the street. Date-night heels click on the gritty sidewalk. A Muni train clangs on the tracks and disappears past the library, beneath Twin Peaks' red-and-white Sutro Tower along the rails into the tunnel. My driveway curves up a steep incline to a narrow, two-story white stucco house crawling with night-blooming jasmine planted long before I was born, before my grandparents left the house to Mom, the only reason we're able to live in this beautiful, overpriced neighborhood. Our porch light burns a perfect circle for me in the foggy dark; I turn one perfect double pirouette.